Scratch Game Design

It's that time again! The time that I get to show you what I've been working on! These past couple weeks we have been working on coding our very own video game! We started with a simple chase game where we had one or more sprites chasing a sprite. Then we continued on to a Platform game where we had a sprite jumping on platforms towards the goal.

My game starts out on a hill one a clear sunny day, then you go to another point on the hill where it is a little cloudy. The next backdrop is a "drop" where you go down the hill into a desert, then it switches to the desert during the day etc. In my second game the backgrounds also switch, but the first time the background switches is when you touch the pink cloud.  The other thing both of my games have in common is that both of the main sprites, the girl and the reindeer, are trying to complete and objective. Though the objective is different they are pretty similar.  In the first game, the girl is trying to get away from the mice.  In the second game the reindeer is trying to get to the pink cloud.  I'm proud of both of my games, even though I know they are simple and have a couple bugs that I need to fix.

In my first game, the chase game, my best code was probably making the girl move smoother.  When I very first made the game the girl was moving weird and it looked very far from good. In my second game I think my best code was probably that I made the reindeer jump, though the code I used was simple I still think it was the most complicated. When you are making your character jump you need o make sure they don't float and you have to make sure your sprite doesn't jump too high or too low. I started with the block change y by _____ and in the blank space I put 10. It was too little so I increased it but then that was too much.  It was kind of difficult but I finally got the right number! So far with the two games that I have I am pretty proud of my work and the fact that I actually coded that and made that game. Even though I don't think I will ever go into coding I think it is pretty knowledge to know how to do.

Invention Commercial

Throughout the past couple weeks students in Kapa'a Middle School's Gifted and Talented program have been working very hard to invent, write and create a commercial.  You guessed it, it's that time again, the time I get to show you what I've been working on! My team was the same team as I had during my previous project "Composition Scavenger Hunt." My team consisted of Makena and Emma, we are all people who really enjoy having fun and laughing, so our goal was to make the class laugh at our commercial, the funnier it is the more memorable it is.  If it's memorable more people will want to buy our product.  We didn't want it to be too serious, so if you watch our commercial there's some jokes and funny things throughout the commercial.

We got most of our filming done on one rainy Saturday afternoon, and I think one of the best team moments were captured during that afternoon. At the beginning of our commercial there is a part where Emma falls and spills her drink everywhere, she then proceeds to have a funeral for the drink she "lost," in the middle of the funeral I jumped into the shot and yell "is this you?!" Makena proceeds to walk into the shot and is telling the audience that we need help. This shot too us about an hour to film.  The first thing we had to do was create a funeral looking thing. The was some flowers on the fence so we took them and placed them all over the water supply thing that's on the ground.  After we did this we gave Emma water to put on her face to appear as though she was crying.  By this time we were all laughing really hard.  By the time we were able to get a perfect shot of Emma it started raining, and we realized we needed me to jump in! We ran inside and waited for the rain to stop.  When the rain stopped we went back out and set-up again, to make a long story short, I fell a couple times, my head got cut off by the camera, Makena's ace was cut in half, I fell on the floor laughing, Emma laughed till she had real tears streaming down her face.  It was fun, and it was the best part of the commercial. I think it was the best part because we would watch the clip find something to make better and then we filmed it to make it better. We did this over and over again till we got the perfect shot.

After we finished all of our filming, it was time to move on to editing, we all helped with the editing, sitting around with earbuds in our ears. Emma was the person who was physically editing it, she was the one with the pen placing the clips in order. Even though Emma was the one moving the clips around and adding effects we all helped out. We would take a clip and we would all talk about where to put it, what effects should be on it, if we needed text layovers, sound effects, transitions, ect. When we had a final decision that met all the requirements and satisfied the entire team we would move on to the next clip. We all listened to the music and sound effects and chose which ones would  best fit the clip, the entire commercial and what point we were trying to get across. When we were filming, whoever wasn't in the shot was filming and who ever need to be in the shot at that time was doing what they needed to do. Overall I had a lot of fun filming and editing this project, we had a couple misunderstandings, like any team but we dealt with it in a positive way so the outcome of it was positive.   

Composition Scavenger Hunt

I think the most important composition technique is probably rule of thirds, I think it's the most important because you can use it for so many different things and it makes the picture a lot more interesting.  For example, you can use rule of thirds when your taking pictures of scenery, it draws the eye to what you want to be seen.  You can also use Rule of Thirds when you are doing an interview or taking pictures of a person.  The Rule of Thirds is much more interesting than a flat angle, when you are taking pictures of a subject directly in front of the subject(s) against a blank wall.

I think macro is one of the more difficult composition techniques to use because you have to get really close to the subject and make it so it's not blurry. I also think it's hard to find things to film using macro because typically when you are filming people or taking pictures you don't want to get extremely close to them.  Also, when your filming nature sometimes you want more than just a macro shot of a flower you want all the scenery, (mountains, valleys, trees, bushes, etc.)

My teammates for this project were Emma McGinnis and Makena Kahananui, we all worked very hard to finish this project in the short time we had.  We each took turns being the subject, talking about the technique and filming.  When we were editing Emma put all the videos together, one of use did the text lay overs and one of us did the music. Over all the three of us worked really well together and had a good time filming and editing this video.  Because we worked so well together, the next upcoming project will be with the three of us so be prepared to see some awesome work!

Cracking the Code

This week at KMS GT classes have started coding, after sitting through a couple class periods trying to code I've learned that there is many jobs that you need to know coding to get the job, or be good at you job.  I think it is pretty important to know coding, especially in todays world where we all rely on technology so much. We use our phones to find information everyday, we use washers and dryers to clean our clothes, we use lights to see everything around us, we use car keys, every single one of these things has code in it to know what you want it to do.  With all these things surrounding us that have code, don't you think it's important to know how to code?  The other reason I have is a lot of jobs need software designers and computer programers, a lot of these spots go "unfilled" because not many people know how to code. 

The first time I coded was in third grade when I was in the schools robotics team.  We had to program the robots to do the missions we wanted them to do.  It was pretty difficult to get it exact, the perfect amount of rotations of the wheels, which side wheel to turn so that it would turn the direction you want it to.  In robotics, we never really called it code, the first time I did it calling it code was in my seventh grade science class.  When I did it in science I never really understood what i was doing, because it wasn't the same thing I was used to.  Even though I didn't understood what I was doing I still thought it was a lot easier.


If I could design any program or game, I would probably design a program where you can take a picture of a textbook or any information you need and it all automatically goes to your brain.  Like photographic memory! The phone or tablet you use some how connects to your brain like a Bluetooth, I don't know if this is actually possible, but let's be honest that would be the coolest thing in the world.  I know you are all thinking, Tessa there's this thing called studying, but let's be real no one can remember everything in the textbooks!

My Humorous Monologue

JensenT_Comedy from Kapaa Middle School MEDIA on Vimeo.
For the past couple weeks in Kapa'a Middle School's GT class, kids from sixth grade to eighth grade have been working very hard to memorize and film their comedic monologues.  The long class periods of editing, filming and memorizing have come to an end, the monologues are complete.  Each person takes knowledge away from this project, knowledge of how to edit, film, and use a camera.  Each has made their own mistakes, but I am here to tell you all about what I learned.  I think the most important thing I learned is to not procrastinate so much.  I didn't film my B-roll till the very last day, this made me really stressed out and I was searching high and low for footage to add.  Lucky for me we got extra days to film, but I know that I can't expect that to happen all the time.

Pad is when you add extra time at the beginning and at the end of your clips.  It is important to pad your clips because when you just start right when the camera you're going to cut a lot of your video, clips or sound off.  Also if you don't add pad you are going to have to re-film and no one wants to re-film.  Pad is also really good to have because it's really easy to do and it only takes a couple seconds. Make sure you pad when you are filming, it makes editing and your life ten times easier and way less stressful!

My biggest weakness is I procrastinate way to much and by the end of the project I am stressed and struggling to finish the project.  My strength is editing, I love editing and I think it's pretty easy.  I can improve by trying for the best
not the average.  I think if i tried harder to make it perfect my work would be a lot better.  I really enjoyed this project and I can't wait to do another one like it soon! 

Comedy Writing

Having a sense of humor is a very important trait to have because it makes you really fun to be around because you can joke back to someone when they are joking about you.  I also think it's good because you can make people laugh a lot and that makes you really fun and likable.  Having a good sense of humor also makes you a happier and more positive person. When you have a sense of humor it allows you to understand when someone is joking around with you vs. when someone is purposefully teasing you, this will make it so your not overly sensitive when someone is joking with you.

If you decide to be crazy and attempt at writing a humorous narrative here's a few things you should know before you venture off into the unknown! The first is write about something you can relate to, like for example one of my jokes is about school dances, I know about school dances because I've been to a lot of them before. The second tip I have is use your own voice, if you are sarcastic write a sarcastic joke, if you aren't sarcastic write about something else. The third tip I have is to make sure you find your joke funny before you decide to present it in front of an audience. The reason for this is because if you don't find it funny, others may not. Also, if you don't find your joke funny then you won't be able to deliver it properly, if you don't deliver it properly it more than likely won't be very funny.  My fourth tip for you is that you should make sure to be descriptive but not too much that it causes the audience to get bored and stop listening.  I suggest throwing jokes everywhere throughout the story.  For example "I had this really bad day once why don't I tell you about it... Why did the chicken cross the road? So about this really bad day...." Doing something like that will cause the reader or audience to laugh more.  I'm just kidding don't put a joke in the middle of a sentence, but you get the idea of it. My fifth and final suggestion for you is that you have the biggest joke, with the biggest laugh at the very end, that way you can lead up to it the whole story.

I have two comedic monologues, the first one is "When I was little I watched a lot of Disney channel movies and every single one of them made school dances look absolutely amazing, but now that I’m in eighth grade they’re really not all they were cut out to be, it’s really just people sitting around eating and listening to music. Like isn’t that what you all do at home? Why would you leave the comfort of your home to sit on uncomfortable bleachers?" This joke would only be funny to people my age because the generation before us did dance at school dances, but my generation doesn't.  This joke is funny because it's one of those "that is so true," jokes.  My second joke also only appeals to teenagers. "My mom always used to tell me teenagers think they know everything, but they really don’t. Now that I am a teenager I realized she was wrong, I do know everything," this is funny because it's proving that what my mom said is right.

Motivational Poster

For our motivational poster we need to have four pictures.  The first three are pictures that we took of things that symbolize us.  I took a picture of a bush in the desert in front of these big canyons, this picture symbolizes me because I am a small part of a big and beautiful picture.  The second one was a picture of a corner of a path, this symbolizes me because I never know what's going to happen in life but I just keep walking.  My final symbol is of a rainbow,  a rainbow symbolizes me because I can make someones day brighter even after a terrible day.  We also had to include a portrait of ourselves, we had a partner take it and we took theirs.  We wrote manifestos and needed to include those along with personal quotes that we wrote. To make our motivational poster visually appealing we had to kern our words to make it fit the entire page.  Not only that but we needed to have different text and font sizes.  We had a Triadic Color Scheme which is three colors evenly spaced around the color wheel.

The very first step of our first 2015-2016 GT project was to write our own personal quotes, the second step was to write our manifesto.  After we wrote both of those things we copied and pasted those two pieces of text into Photoshop and kerned them so that the text went from one side of the page to the other without any gaps. When we finished kerning we added our four images that we took, three symbols and one portrait of ourselves.  Once we added the images we laid them out so there was no spaces and they all fit nicely.  After adding and adjusting our images we started getting creative and using or triadic color scheme to change the color of the text, to our text we added strokes, bevel and emboss, drop shadows etc.  As soon as we were done adding effects to our text we started with the images.  I individually edited each of my images before adding my effects to all of them.  I saturated each of my images, to make them stand out more. I also adjusted the brightness and contrast of all the photos individually.  I then added the adjustment layer curves to all of my images.    

I think my biggest challenge was trying to get the text to cover the whole page without any gaps.  I think this was my biggest challenge because I was only thinking about having the text one way and I wasn't open to any more ideas.  When I finally found another way to do it I kerned it so there wasn't any more gaps.  The other reason I had trouble with it was because I wanted it to be obvious that there was two separate pieces of text, my manifesto being first and my personal quotes being last. As soon as I figured out a way to make it obvious it was two separate pieces of text (by making the font size and font color different,) I was able to make it look nice and I was able to show the two separate pieces of text.